On Making a Mark

I remember being so young, I wanted to make my mark on the world. I thought if I could perform so well I’d win admiration and respect. The ancients thought of this as glory and honour, but significantly, these qualities spread to include not only self, but family and nation as well. You don’t win for yourself, but for all.

            The mark you make will be your own mark, as it turns out. It may be admired or despised, depending on your gifts, limitations, intentions, inspirations and chances. You always make some kind of mark. Some marks are faint, some regretted, some authentic.

             You may also erase the marks of others. This could be grave sin or needed correction. Laws may be rewritten, antiquities destroyed, lives liberated or encaged. Lao Tzu felt the less done the better.

            I’m fascinated by the marks Jesus wrote on the ground when confronting the woman taken in adultery. What does he write? His ministry was to bring sight to the blind and liberation to captives. The men accusing her were blind to their own faults and had to be enlightened. She herself was freed to make her fair mark. Make it so.

On Work Not Grace

The argument that unemployed, sick, disabled, or aged persons aren’t worthy of government support, even where their taxes have filled government coffers, isn’t a financial but a theological view. Just because people seem atheistical, ignorant, secular, or indifferent doesn’t mean they have no theology. Indeed they may be more influenced by it than those who take a conscious position.

            In this 500^th anniversary year of the Reformation, politics provides ongoing evidence of the pervasiveness of work over grace. Where the signs of salvation (a limited quantity) are shown in hard work, frugality, and self-discipline, those who are born to fail display other qualities. The theology is of a judging God, a judging State. United States culture, due to Puritan influence, is vulnerable to this view.

            Where this is secularised, you get judgements such as: you should’ve saved against misfortune; shouldn’t have taken drugs; shouldn’t have lost your job; shouldn’t have married a violent man. Grace, which is the unmerited favour of God, would say: so this has happened; we will help you.

            We’re about to be living in a post-work world, as robotics advances. What then? Will peace be then on earth, to those of good will?

On Plutocracy

‘If religion was a thing that money could buy the rich would live and the poor would die.’ I couldn’t find a name for the original writer of these lyrics, but versions were around throughout the latter 20^th century. Version, itself a word that scares people. Version implies at least two views, with its meaning of ‘variant’ offering diversity, difference, mutability. That translation varies deeply threatens some. Who dares vary?

     The word plutocracy, first noted in the 17^th century, links wealth and power. The reign of the rich. The three Magi, or kings, brought their precious offerings to the King, thus keeping their treasures within the circle of authority. This King had a variant view of the poor.

     From the worldly rich in their states of power we see the poor: disorganised, feckless, profligate, decadent. They fail the test of virtue: they fail to be rich. Plutocracy has no room for the poor.

     King Herod was troubled when the Magi appeared. Where is this treasure going? To the Benefactor of the poor, of women, cripples, sex workers, tax collectors. Tax collectors? Yes, we need to pay more tax. And it needs to go down, not up, into plutocracy.